Liz Taylor to be buried near Michael Jackson

LOS ANGELES—Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor was to be buried Thursday in the same cemetery as her long-time friend pop icon Michael Jackson, a day after her death, police said.

A police spokesman said officers were given short notice of the private funeral, expected in the afternoon at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, just outside Los Angeles.

“It will certainly tax our resources but … we’ve had a lot of large services here – I think the most recent ones were the anniversary and the services for Michael Jackson – we’ve been able to deal with it,” he said.

“We’re going to be able to deal with it again. We’re ready to roll,” Glendale police spokesman Tom Lorenz told the KCAL9 TV station.

Jackson, who was a close friend of Taylor, was buried at Forest Lawn following his death in June 2009 aged 50, from an overdose of the powerful sedative propofol.

People magazine reported that the unexpectedly rapid burial, barely 36 hours after her death from congestive heart failure aged 79, was because she had converted to Judaism.

A spokeswoman for Taylor did not immediately return requests for information about the funeral ceremony, or the People report.

The TMZ celebrity news website published a copy of Taylor’s death certificate, which listed Forest Lawn as where she would be buried.

The certificate gave her causes of death as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – which it said she had had for 10 years – congestive heart failure, five years, and cardiopulmonary arrest – against which was noted five minutes.